Where multicultural Australia comes together

Monthly Archives: August 2013

Theatre production I Am Here is back by popular demand as part of Queensland Multicultural Week this year. I Am Here follows the stories of six African-Australians. Based on true stories, the play is about the lives of refugee children growing up in Australia and the challenges they face.

We caught up with six of the actors – Pacific, Eric, Levi, Concy and Senayt – in between rehearsal at BEMAC. They told us about what I am Here is all about and bringing their life stories to the stage.

One of the stories in I Am Here is about an aspiring actress auditioning for a TV show, only to be frustrated that the casting agent focuses on her ethnicity rather than her skills. This is based on Senayt’s experiences breaking into the acting industry in Australia. She talked about the difficulties she has faced and the state of diversity in Australian television.

School can be challenging enough for most kids, but what about if you’re from a different cultural background to most of your classmates?

It can be a positive or negative experience depending on support and people around you.

Naseema Mustapha is a South African Muslim migrant who came to Brisbane as a child in the late 70s. Now, she volunteers in refugee health services and her own children are in school. She tells us what it was like going to school in Australia in the 70s-80s, and how different it is to her childrens’ experiences today.

Last week, we went to Yeronga State High School’s Multicultural Festival. The students of Yeronga State High School in Brisbane’s south-west are from 55 different countries and over 60 distinct cultural groups. These groups are from all over the world – Afghanistan and Iran, to Thailand and Vietnam, to Somalia and Sudan, to Russia to Tonga to Bangladesh.

Over 50% of students are from refugee backgrounds.

Students paraded through the school’s courtyard dressed in traditional clothing from their family’s homelands.

On the 150th anniversary of South Sea Islander labourers arriving to Australia, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) added 67 historically-significant items from the Queensland State Archives collection to the Memory of the World Register.

Queensland Archives held a seminar at Brisbane Square Library on Tuesday to teach people how to use the archives to find their relatives. These archives amass deaths, births, school registers, prison records, photographs, maps, legal documents and more.

The 4th annual Korean Film Festival launched on Wednesday, now in its 2nd year screening in Brisbane. The festival, which will later travel to Sydney and Melbourne, showcases Korean films along with forums, cultural activities and performances.

Staff and volunteers from the Korean Cultural Office. We talked to David Park, back right.

The Korean Film Festival is run by the Korean Cultural Office based in Sydney. After watching the funny and heartbreaking opening night movie A Werewolf Boy, I caught up with David Park from the Korean Cultural Office to talk about the increasingly popularity of Korean Culture in Australia.

A group of African men who host 3CR radio’s ‘African-Australian Voice‘ launched a civil case against Victoria Police over racial profiling. The men themselves and other African people in the Victorian suburbs of Flemington and Kensington have suffered physical and verbal racist abuse from police over the last few years.

Since the beginning of the case, it was discovered that Victoria Police had in fact been targeting Africans under a secret operation called Operation Molto. Numerous community consultations have encouraged African people to come forward to talk about bad encounters they’ve had with police.

Maki Issa, one of the men involved with the case, talked to Where are you From? about the aftermath of the case and what it means for the African community in Flemington and Kensington.